Thursday, January 9, 2025

Lessons From Germany's Economic Contraction


Lessons From Germany's Economic Contraction
John Klar



Germany’s once-envied efficient economy is in freefall, and the climate change cult and European Green Deal are directly to blame. State policies subsidizing EVs and other products, shutting down coal and nuclear plants, and mandating forced conversion to untested, unimplemented “renewables” resources for energy have decimated industrial efficiency. Industries and blue-collar jobs are fleeing Germany for polluting, profitable operations in China, India, and elsewhere abroad. Will the United States follow suit?

As natural gases skyrocket during a European cold snap, and Russian gas pipelines through Ukraine are shut down for the first time since 1991, Germany has transitioned from Europe’s economic darling to its leading economic anchor. Followed closely by France and the UK, similarly weighted by economically destructive climate fantasies that are crashing to Earth like ideological meteors, the latest blow to gas supplies compounds the crisis occasioned by the mysterious sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2.

The results of this disastrous state-controlled economic carbon dioxide experiment continue to be as evident as explosives in a controlled demolition. Germany terminated massive EV subsidies at the end of 2023; EV sales promptly fell 69%. Despite gushing economic promises of “high-paying jobs” in the renewables industry, Germany announces more layoffs almost daily. Chinese companies, unhindered by escalating energy and regulatory costs, are leading in EV and other manufacturing technologies while spewing more chemicals into the ecosystem than German manufacturing industries.

The climate cult is pushing jobs and pollution out of Europe, amplifying both for nations like India. German icon Volkswagen has threatened to close factories for the first time in its history, and recent layoffs of 35,000 (and wage reductions for 120,000) employees are harbingers of more to follow. Consumers are burdened by high energy prices for heat and travel. Fund managers and NGOs may be profiting from renewables manufacturing policies, but workers, consumers, and the ecosystem are all being systematically eviscerated in the boondoggle pursuit.

Will the U.S. continue to follow Germany’s demonstrable folly? If the legendary German industrial model is being crippled by destructive climate change policies, the anemic American one (with unpredictable tariffs looming) is similarly threatened.

However, there is hope stateside — the United States possesses precious natural gas supplies that Germany now lacks and has not shuttered its fossil fuel production. Renewables manufacturing, as well as the production of plastics, cement, steel, and fertilizers, all depend on high-temperature processes only available through fossil fuels or nuclear power. They cannot be replaced with solar, wind, or other energy sources, as Germany is proving despite big plans to convert its entire economy to renewables overnight. (Indeed, cutting traditional energy production in Germany fueled a vicious economic cycle by inflating natural gas prices.)

As one market observer summarized:

The effect of the green agenda can be summed up as a long path to the gradual degradation of Europe’s energy security and a resulting path to deindustrialization. The Ukraine conflict only exacerbated it…

The EU economy is already stagnated, with companies signaling a continued drive toward deindustrialization of their domestic economy, while the New Year brings many new challenges that threaten to accelerate the process.

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1 comment:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa said...

The plan was to have reduced the population by 2025, thus green energy would have been able to meet the needs. Covit and long covit did not work, so Germany will just have to have a war.